Oral History

Guy Logsdon: Discusses the Life and Performs the Songs of Woody Guthrie

 

Abstract

            This is a performance of Guy Logsdon talking about Woody Guthrie’s life, reading from his writings, and performing some of the songs Guthrie wrote and performed. It begins with  Logsdon singing “I’m Blowing Down This Old Dusty Road.”

 

Full Text

 

I’m blowin’ down this old dusty road,

Yeah, I’m blowin’ down this old dusty road,

I’m blowin’ down this old dusty road, Lord God,

And I ain’t-a gonna be treated this a-way.

 

I’m goin’ where the water tastes like wine,

Yeah, I’m goin’ where the water tastes like wine,

This Oklahoma water tastes like turpentine, Lord God,

And I ain’t-a gonna be treated this a-way.

 

I’m goin’ where the dust storms never blow,

Well, I’m goin’ where the dust storms never blow,

Yeah, I’m goin’ where the dust storms never blow, Lord God,

And I ain’t-a gonna be treated this a-way.

 

            I’m Guy Logsdon and that was one of Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads. I spent the past thirty years collecting, writing, talking – doing any number of things dealing with the life of Woody Guthrie. I admire Woody for his creativity and enjoy his songs. My wife is from Okemah and I was introduced to the works of Woody in 1953 and I’ve continued through these years to steadfastly maintain a sense of loyalty to what he has given to us, not only as Oklahomans and our culture, but also to the musical heritage and culture throughout the world.

 

            Woody was a unique person. He created his detractors and critics and he created disciples who follow and worship him, almost. I’m in between. I try to maintain an objective detachment in order to view the life of Woody as truthfully as I can. I was involved in organizing the 1982 Smithsonian Institution and Oklahoma Diamond Jubilee Folklife Festival held in Washington in June and July of 1982. The Smithsonian Folklife Director Ralph Rinzler and I decided that it would not be right for Oklahoma’s subculture to be exhibited and shared with the world if we ignored Woody Guthrie. Therefore, we put together an idea and along with Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Studs Terkel, Bernice Regan, Ronnie Gilbert, Josh White, Jr., and I – we staged a two-and-a-half-hour tribute to Woody on the mall in front of the Smithsonian without any advance publicity. It had been stated that there might be some Oklahomans who wouldn’t want us to pay tribute to Woody as an Oklahoma tribute. So we did it quietly and merely let the word spread by word of mouth. In a two day period from the time we put it together and performed, word had traveled far enough and wide enough that we attracted 10,000 people. We decided that we would let Woody speak for himself. None of us needed to write nor speak material to defend, support, adulate, no matter what. We knew that Woody’s words were sufficient. So we took turns on the stage speaking, singing – or rather reading and singing – letting Woody’s own work tell his story. And that’s what I’m doing here – using the script that we used in Washington and letting Woody tell his own story.

 

            Studs Terkel opened the program with 

 

“Woody Guthrie: a tough, skinnyrocity [sic], wind-blown, curly-head – a little piece of leather, a dirt road, hard pavement, dank boxcar, ship galley, cold city, hot desert, coast-to-coast poet and minstrel – the champion of all American ballad writers, plus newsboy, shine-boy, spittoon washer, hoer of fields, picker of mustang grapes, carpenter’s helper, well-driller’s assistant, sign painter, and street singer. Nobody knows the exact number of songs written by Woody. Take a thousand – a good, round conservative figure. The odds are better than even that there were many, many more written on the spot – any old spot – the wayside inn, the gas station, the greasy spoon, the ma and pa tavern, the hamburger haven, the subway bench, the jungle camp, the friendly davenport. Been here and gone places. How many of these were lost – bartered for a pint of muskee or casually flipped away? Not even Woody had the faintest idea. Dust Bowl songs, hobo songs, children’s songs, work songs, loafing songs, war songs, peace songs, union songs, river and dam songs, lonesome turtle-dove songs, songs infinite in their variety celebrating the wonder of man. For what is man to Woody? Just a hoping machine, a working machine – the human race is a pretty good old place.”

 

I been doin’ some hard travelin’, I thought you know’d,

I been doin’ some hard ramblin’, way down the road,

I been doin’ some hard ramblin’, hard drinkin’, hard gamblin’,

I been doin’ some hard ramblin’, Lord.

 

Well, I been doin’ some hard rock minin’, I thought you know’d,

I been leanin’ on a pressure drill way down the road, 

With the hammer flyin’ and the air-hose suckin’, six feet of mud I sure been a-muckin’,

I been havin’ some hard travelin’, Lord.

 

Well, I been doin’ some hard harvestin’, I thought you know’d,

North Dakota to Kansas City, way down the road,

Cuttin’ that wheat and stackin’ that hay, tryin’ to make a dollar a day,

I been doin’ some hard travelin’, Lord.

 

      Any occupation, Woody would write a verse. That song in his hands probably could go forever. But Woody loved children. His early songs were those for children, many of them sung on Captain Kangaroo, sort of children’s classics. I still say “go to the kids. See the kids. Study the kid and be like the kids. Some people whip the kids, but you still can’t beat ‘em. A child is a human being before it gets all fouled up.”

 

Well, a curly-haired kid with a sunshiny smile

Heard the roar of a plane as it sailed through the sky,

To her playmate she said with a bright twinkling eye,

“My daddy rides that ship in the sky.”

 

Now my daddy rides that ship in the sky,

My daddy rides that ship in the sky,

Momma’s not afraid, well, neither am I,

‘Cause my daddy rides that ship in the sky.

 

Punk-nosed kid kicked up his heels

Said my daddy works at the yard and the steel

My daddy makes planes so they fly through the sky

It’s dad that keeps your daddy up there so high.

 

My dad keeps your daddy up there so high,

My dad keeps your daddy up there so high, 

Your not afraid, well, neither am I,

‘Cause my dad keeps your daddy up there so high.

 

The shy little girl flinched her toe in the sand,

Said my daddy works at the place where they land,

So you tell your momma don’t be afraid,

‘Cause my dad will bring your daddy back home again.

 

My dad will bring your daddy back home again, 

My dad will bring your daddy back home again,

You tell your momma don’t be afraid, 

‘Cause my dad will bring your daddy back home again.

 

      As time went by, he left Oklahoma, California, wound up in New York City.

 

“There, around 1940, we got a registered letter that told us to come up to the Columbia River to the Bonneville and the Grand Coulee Dam to the office of the Bonneville Power Administration. Well, I talked to the people and I got my job. It was to read some books about the Coulee and Bonneville Dams, to walk around up and down the rivers, and to see what I could find to make up songs about. I made up 26.”

 

Green Douglas firs where the waters come through,

Down our wild mountains and canyons they flew,

Canadian northwest to the ocean so blue,

Roll on, Columbia, roll on. 

 

      Roll on, Columbia, roll on, 

Roll on, Columbia, roll on,

Your power is turning our darkness to dawn,

Roll on, Columbia, roll on.

 

At Bonneville, now, where our ships enter locks,

The waters have risen and cleared all the rocks,

Shiploads a-plenty will steam past the docks, 

It’s roll on, Columbia, roll on. 

 

      Roll on, Columbia, roll on, 

Roll on, Columbia, roll on,

Your power is turning our darkness to dawn,

Roll on, Columbia, roll on.

 

            Anyone who might be singing this has to keep in mind, Woody wrote songs to be sung, that songs and the others to be sung, so take a deep breath of air and sing all of these songs with me.

 

      Roll on, Columbia, roll on, 

Roll on, Columbia, roll on,

Your power is turning our darkness to dawn,

Roll on, Columbia, roll on.

 

            And, of course, that song has so many more verses that we could spend 20 minutes singing that one – and make up a few as we go along! But they played his songs. They played them over the loud speakers at meetings to sell bonds to carry the high-lines from the dams to the little towns.

 

“The private power dams hated to see these two babies born to standup out there across those rock-wall canyons, and they pulled every trick possible to hold up the deal, saying that the materials would be wasted, could be used to build a big war machine that would beat Hitler. Our argument was that we could run a thousand towns and factories, farms, with these two power dams, turn out aluminum bombers to beat Hitler a lot quicker. Our side won out on top.”

 

Have you heard of the ship called the good Reuben James,

Manned by hard-fighting men both of honor and fame,

Well, they flew the stars and stripes of the land of the free,

And now they’re in their grave at the bottom of the sea.

 

Tell me what were their names, tell me, what were their names?

Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?

What were their names, tell me, what were their names?

Did you have a friend on the Good Reuben James?

 

Well, a hundred men went down with that dark and watery grave,

Well, the good ship went down and only 44 were saved,

‘Twas the last day of October that we saved the 44,

From the cold ocean waters of that cold ocean floor.

 

Tell me what were their names, tell me, what were their names?

Did you have a friend on the Good Reuben James?

What were their names, tell me, what were their names?

Did you have a friend on the Good Reuben James?

 

It was there in the dark of that uncertain night,

That we watched for the u-boats and waited for the fight,

Then a whine and a rock and a great explosion roared,

And it laid the Reuben James on that cold ocean floor. 

 

Tell me what were their names, tell me, what were their names?

Did you have a friend on the Good Reuben James?

What were their names, tell me, what were their names?

Did you have a friend on the Good Reuben James?

 

Woody took a lot of good songs – good tunes, and turned them into his songs. In fact, he said, over one of his radio shows, “I sort of gotta rush along here. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do in a short time. Fifteen minutes is all they gave me. But the men that run this station told me that if you were to write me enough cards and letters that they’d stretch my time out and made it thirty minutes.

 

“Now I’ve followed all kinds of big work jobs all over the country, like the oil fields, coal mines, big timber jobs, the Grand Coulee Dam, the TVA in the state of Tennessee, the harvesting of all kinds of crops like cotton, wheat, spuds, beets, and grapes, fruits and berries and vegetables. I followed the building of the big highway, like the Lincoln and the Sixty-Six, the hard-rock tunnels, the WPA roads, and the streamlined speedways, and the building of the big ships, the places where ferryboats land where the subway trains and all of the other trains load up full of people. And I sang in road houses, hotels, mess rooms, churches, union halls, saloons and nightclubs, and taverns, and have always sung for twelve or fifteen hours a day and sometimes twenty-four. And now to try to sing these same kinds of songs on a little ol’ fifteen minute spot here on the radio, well, it cramps me just a little bit. Sort of slows me down. I ain’t got elbow room. Ain’t got room enough to breathe in. I need thirty minutes at the very least. I you write me a card of a letter, then the owner will see that you want thirty minutes, too, and we’ll be getting something done.

 

“I sing all kinds of tales and stories that the people sing while they work or while they’re looking for work. I sing old-time songs about love and fights and so forth and so on and about the big jobs that have made this country what it is. I don’t sing any songs that are not real. I don’t sing any silly or any jerky songs, nor any songs that make fun of your color, your race, the color of your eyes, the shape of  your nose or your stomach – any of those. I don’t sing any songs of the playboys and the gals that get paid for hugging the mike and wiggling their hips. I sing songs that people made up to help them do more work, to get somewhere in this old world, to fall in love, and to get married, and to have kids, and to have trade unions, to have the right to speak out your mind about how to make this old world a little bit better place to work in. I sing songs that are fighting with guns to win the world where you’ll have a good job at union pay, a right to speak up, to think, to have honest prices, and honest wages, and a nice clean place to live in, and a good safe place to work in.

 

“I even sing songs about getting nursery schools for little kids too young to play in the streets, and schools where all the other kids can go to keep from playing their games under the garbage trucks. I don’t sing any songs about the nine divorces of some millionaire playgal or the ten wives of some screwball. I’ve just not got the time to sing those kinds of songs. And I wouldn’t sing them if they paid me ten thousand dollars a week.

 

“I sing the songs of the people that do all of the little jobs, the mean and the dirty hard work, and the world of their wants and their hopes and their plans for a decent life. I happen to believe that songs and music can be used to get all of these good things that you want. Maybe you never did hear a song that you figured was of much help to you in getting the job and the pay and the mate and the home that you want. Maybe you never did hear a song that you thought was a help to you in paying off your debts. I hate a song that makes you think that you’re not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you’re just born to lose – bound to lose – no good to no body – no good for nothing – because you’re either too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelin’. I’m out to fight those kinds of songs till my very last breath and my last drop of blood.

 

“I’m out to sing songs that will prove to you that this your world and that if it’s hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter how hard it’s run you down or rolled over you, no matter what color, what size, how you’re built, I’m out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up, for the most part, by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side – the big money side and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to the sing the kind that knock you down still further and the one that makes fun of you even more, and the ones that make you think you’ve got no sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your juke boxes and your movies and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

 

“I leave it up to you to write in to me. Write in to me and tell me what you think. Get your whole family and your friends and your neighbors to write in. Tell me that you think such a program should be more than just fifteen minutes long.”

 

            Woody was the type who could write without any effort songs, prose, no matter what he did, if flowed from his pen. The folklorist and anthropologist John Greenway once stated that by accident when he was flying from Los Angeles to New York, Woody was on the same plane. Some may believe that Woody only took trains and hitchhiked, but there was a time when he flew. And Greenway sat next to him and as they passed over Oklahoma, he looked down and he said, “Woody, that’s your home down there, that’s Oklahoma.” So Woody said, “Let me borrow your pen.” And by the time they had flown across Oklahoma, Woody had sketched out a little song about the state. Greenway said, “Do you always write that fast?” Woody said, “Nope, only when I’ve got a good pen.” He loved this state. He loved Okemah. He loved his home. He loved it all. He was so proud of that – that Oklahoma hills and he took his money – a thousand dollars that Capitol Records paid him and cashed it into one dollar bills and put it in a shoe box, took it home, and went in and yelled at Marjorie and said, “We’re rich! We’re rich!” And threw all of those one dollar bills all over the area where they were living in their apartment. She told me that it took her days to pick up all of those one dollar bills he had thrown everywhere. So it was his song, there was no doubt about it. And he loved this state. But he wrote this song and thought “If this goes, then maybe another cowboy type song, or western song, would go.” And I’ll just sing one or two verses. It’s one of the least-known of Woody’s songs.

 

Lay down, little doggies, lay down,

We both got to sleep to the cold, cold ground, 

The wind’s blowin’ colder and the sun’s a-goin’ down,

So lay yourselves down, little doggies, lay down.

 

We hit this old geese trail some two months ago,

We blistered in the sun and we froze in the snow,

In ten days we’ll come into Packinghouse Town, 

So lay ourselves down, little doggies, lay down.

 

Lay down, little doggies, lay down,

We both got to sleep to the cold, cold ground, 

The wind’s blowin’ colder and the sun’s a-goin’ down,

So lay yourselves down, little doggies, lay down.

 

            Should have done much better than it did. No one has really picked it up. But Woody wrote songs for migrants as his favorite group of people. Of all of his times in Oklahoma after his tragedy of his mother and his father and his sister had died from burns, Woody started taking are of himself, and in the summertime traveled from the Gulf area up north and back to Okemah in time for school. He developed a strong empathy for the migrant worker and their problems, so he wrote, I think, some of his best songs – possibly his best – dealing with his state and with the migrants.

 

It’s a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed,

My poor feet have traveled a hot, dusty road,

Out of your Dust Bowl and westward we rode,

Your deserts was hot and your mountains was cold.

 

I’ve worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes,

Slept on the ground in the light of the moon, 

On the edge of your city you’ll see us and then

We come with the dust and we go with the wind.

 

California, Arizona, I make all your crops,

Then it’s north up to Oregon to gather the hops,

Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from the vine,

To sit on your table your light, sparkling wine.

 

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground,

From the Grand Coulee Dam where the water runs down,

Every state in this union us migrants have been,

We work in your fight and we fight till we win. 

 

Well, it’s always we wandered that river and I,

All along your green valley I’ll work till I die,

My land I’ll defend with my life if need be,

‘Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free. 

 

            He sang for women, for women’s groups, for every kind of group person anywhere. And his famous one that he wrote in Oklahoma City is:

 

There once was a union maid, who never was afraid,

Of goons and ginks and the company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid,

She went to the union hall, and a meeting it was called,

When the company boys come around, she always stood her ground.

 

Oh you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union,

No, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union, till the day I die. 

 

This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,

She couldn’t be fooled by a company tools, she’d always organize the guys, 

She always got her way when she struck for higher pay,

She showed her card to the national guard and this is what she’d say:

 

Oh you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union,

No, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union, till the day I die.

 

You maids who want to be free just take a little tip from me,

Get you a man who’s a union man and join the ladies’ auxiliary,

‘Cause married life ain’t hard when you got you a union card,

A union man with a union wife leads a happy life.

 

Oh you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union,

No, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union, till the day I die.

 

            Of course that song and quite a few along that line didn’t necessarily win him any popularity, but these are some of the songs that identify Woody as a unique writer for social problems. If we put anything about Woody’s life into a capsule it would be that he wrote for people and he wrote about those issues that deal with problems between individuals and among groups of people. Woody was for the common man. In turn, Woody spoke out in such a way that he made his fair share of critics, but those critics have never really taken the time to read all that he’s had to say and listen to his songs. A song such as

 

Crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,

The oranges are in the creosote dump,

They’re flying us back to the Mexican border, 

To take all our money and swim back again. 

 

Good-by, my Juan, good-by, Rosalita,

Adios, mis amigos, Jesus and Maria,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,

And all they will call you will be “deportee.”

 

My father’s own father, he waded that river,

They took all the money he made in his life.

My brothers and sisters come working the fruit fields,

They rode in the trucks till they took down and died.

 

Good-by, my Juan, good-by, Rosalita,

Adios, mis amigos, Jesus and Maria,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,

And all they will call you will be “deportee.”

 

Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted,

Our work contract’s out and we have to move on,

Six hundred miles to the Mexican border,

They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

 

Good-by, my Juan, good-by, Rosalita,

Adios, mis amigos, Jesus and Maria,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,

And all they will call you will be “deportee.”

 

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,

We died in your valleys and died on your plains,

We died ‘neath your trees, we died in your bushes,

Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

 

So good-by, my Juan, good-by, Rosalita,

Adios, mis amigos, Jesus and Maria,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,

And all they will call you will be “deportee.”

 

The sky plane caught fire o’re Los Gatos Canyon – 

A fireball of lightning and shook all our hills.

Who are all these friends scattered like dry leaves?

The radio says “They’re just deportees.”

 

Good-by, my Juan, good-by, Rosalita,

Adios, mis amigos, Jesus and Maria,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,

And all they will call you will be “deportee.”

 

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?

To fall like dry leaves, to rot on the topsoil,

And be called by no name but deportees?

 

Good-by, my Juan, good-by, Rosalita,

Adios, mis amigos, Jesus and Maria,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,

And all they will call you will be “deportee.”

 

            Of course the story of that is that a plane-load of deportees blew up around 1948 over the Los Gatos Canyon area in California. As a result, over 50 died in the crash, and the radio and newspaper coverage at the time stated “Plane Crashes – Just Deportees” and it offended Woody because Woody thought that every human being, no matter who, what, when, where, whatever – every human being was entitled to the dignity of their name at least in death, and so many people did not enjoy that dignity and have not enjoyed the dignity of their own name. And he was offended that the media would be so crass as to say “just deportees.”

 

            Actually, I could talk a long time about Woody and tell quite a few stories. His biography written by Joe Klein is the standard work. Joe’s book is very good, but I think it misrepresents a great deal of the Guthrie family and Oklahoma. Woody’s father was a proud man. Klein leaves the impression that he was an alcoholic. He was not. He was a man of extreme pride, wore a white shirt, tie, hat, even in the summertime. He merely was reduced to living in what we call low-income housing – those are the dollar, two-dollar, five-dollar a night – or week – five a week – hotels. He lived in Oklahoma City and left the Reno Street hotel area to go to the Huckins where so much Oklahoma history took place, and enjoyed a life of little money, but dignity and pride. And for Klein and for anyone else to imply that Charlie Guthrie lived out his life in the slums and the gutter – this sort of thing is wrong. Charlie Guthrie was a man of pride, and I have read the letters that he wrote to Woody almost up to the time that he died. And I’ve read Woody’s letters to Charlie Guthrie.

           

            The letters Woody wrote to his father give an entirely different picture of Woody Guthrie than our popular rebellious voice for the downtrodden. Woody had great love and respect for his father, and kept writing “I’m going to make enough money where we can buy a home and you can move up here and live with us.” And they were letters of love and concern. In fact, I’ve never really read more moving letters than those that were exchanged between Woody and his father. But in creating an image that people want, that type of communication and correspondence is often omitted deliberately.

 

            Charlie Guthrie was a good man. He had suffered what very few people suffer and survive without becoming alcoholics or turning to a total life of despair. Instead, with the loss of a wife, with the death of a very loved daughter, with his entire family basically falling apart, suffering severe burns – all at that period when he would have been most productive in life – Charlie Guthrie survived. He was a survivor. He had actually come to Indian Territory in 1898 as bronc buster cowboy, breaking horses for the Spradling Ranch over near Okmulgee. And then when Okemah was organized in 1902, he was living in the near-by community of Castle, and there he and Nora Sherman, later Nora Sherman Tanner, were married about the time Okemah was established. He became a leader in the community. But his entire world fell apart, but he didn’t. He wrote letters to – actually stories, little children stories – to his grandson, Mary Jo’s son, and they’re beautiful stories for children. He was imaginative enough that he cut bed sheets and typed them instead of on paper – he used fabric. So a lot of Woody’s creativity came from his father.

 

            Charlie was a good man and not an alcoholic and I resist and resent anyone who says otherwise. In fact, years ago in Tulsa, following a ball game – football game one afternoon – this was shortly after Woody’s death in 1967. I got home and my children were upset because they had been receiving what they called obscene phone calls from a drunk woman. So I waited for the call to happen again and when the phone rang I answered. Sure enough, she was drunk and just cursing her head vilely. I said, “what’s your problem?” After I chewed her out for terrorizing my children and got her name and telephone number, she was willing, after I intimidated her over the phone to give me that information, it turns out that she had been in love with Charlie Guthrie as a little girl and she resented all of the stories being told about the Guthrie family and wanted me to know that he was an excellent man and a great man, even though her childhood crush had ended many years before.

 

            And I’ve had others say the same thing, so I defend the Guthrie family tremendously as outstanding people. And to meet Woody’s sister is explanation enough. Nothing else needs be said. Mary Jo is the essence of grace, beauty, personality, and kindness, and loves her brother and her brother loved her. So all of the other things are, for the most part, nonsense.

 

            Woody made enemies and made friends. I’ve heard many stories about when he’d come back through. He’d stink so much from being on the road and not bathing that some of his friends’ wives would not let him in their home until they would bathe Woody and buy him new clothes. One man, every time Woody came through, would have to take him in, get Pine-Sol, bar of soap, put Woody in the bathtub, make him bathe, and put on new clothes. He was a character, but he was a creative character. And my sentiment is, it would be a sad world, indeed, if we had not had Woody Guthrie, but I also say that I’m not sure we could have stood two. That might have been a little strong and heavy.

 

            He was so great, and so creative, but two might . . . . and he dropped out of high school. I tell this to some people. It’s not for high school students, of course. A lot of people think they’re creative who aren’t, and they’ll leave school under the guise of creativity when they probably should be in a military school somewhere. But Woody had to drop out of school. He went to West Texas. His sophomore high school teacher was my high school sophomore teacher, Art Harrison – Arthur Harrison – taught in Okemah in the late 20s and then moved to Ada, which is my hometown. And Art Harrison was the first person to mention Woody to me. And, I think, Art Harrison had an influence on Woody’s life, as well as on my life, so I like to pay tribute to a mutual teacher who had a impact on one person, and I think quite a bit on another. And he at first introduced me to Woody, but the idea of dropping out of school – had Woody gone on to college he might have become a banker, he might have been a stockbroker today. He might have been involved in all – and as smart and shrewd as he was, who knows what would have happened? I think we deserved and got Woody. I do not advise any young people to try to follow in his footsteps.

 

            Woody loved songs of all kinds. His mother was a singer. In turn, he grew up hearing songs. And as he traveled, he had a quick memory for memorizing them. And one of his favorite songs – and I want to stop and stress that the folk song movement in New York City owes far more to Woody Guthrie than they really admit. They pay a lot of attention to Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly, and the songs that he taught to people. Having gone through the songbooks that Woody compiled in the late ‘30s before all of this hit New York City, and seeing the songs that he carried with him to that community, I think most of the songs that they learned in that folk group in New York City came from Woody and no one else. They are all there, evidence-wise. So, he carried with him a vast store-house of just plain everyday folk songs of this great nation. His favorite, one that’s often associated with Woody, is

 

Go to sleep, you weary hobo,

Let the towns drift slowly by,

Can’t you hear the steel rail humming? 

That’s the hobo’s lullaby.

 

I know you’re clothes are torn and ragged,

And you’re hair is turning gray, 

But lift your head and smile at trouble, 

You’ll find peace and rest someday.

 

Everyone should be singing – it’s just a simple song that goes

 

Go to sleep, you weary hobo,

Let the towns drift slowly by,

Can’t you hear the steel rail humming? 

It’s the hobo’s lullaby.

 

Once again!

 

Go to sleep, you weary hobo,

Let the towns drift slowly by,

Can’t you hear the steel rail humming? 

That’s the hobo’s lullaby.

 

      That was actually written by Goebel Reeves who, twenty years earlier, had set out on a life just like Woody did much later. Goebel Reeves wrote a lot of hobo songs, but he also made a little career in New York City back in the late 1930s singing his hobo songs, and he came up with another one that fit the mood of the 30s. Same song, just different words

 

Go to sleep, you weary cowboy,

Let the herd drift slowly by,

Listen to the cattle lowing,

That’s the cowboy’s lullaby.

 

I know the rustlers cause you trouble,

They cause trouble everywhere,

But when you die and go to heaven,

There’ll be no more rustlers there.

 

So go to sleep, you weary cowboy,

Let the herd drift slowly by,

Listen to the cattle lowing,

That’s the cowboy’s lullaby.

 

      Of course Woody’s most famous song is This Land is Your Land – one that is used for advertising, school rooms, sung around campfires – anywhere people sing, they’ll wind up singing This Land is Your Land.And it’s known equally as well around the rest of the world.

 

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters

Sayin’ this land was made for you and me.

 

I roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps

To sparking sands of your diamond deserts

And all around me a voice was sounding

Sayin’ this land was made for you and me.

 

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf stream waters

Sayin’ this land was made for you and me.

 

      One more time and everyone sing!!

 

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters

Sayin’ this land was made for you and me.

 

(switches to another song)

 

Many a month has come and gone

Since I wandered from my home

In the Oklahoma hills where I was born.

Many a page in life has turned

Many a lesson I have learned

While in those hills I still belong.

 

 End of tape.